Sacrament
by apsara
Summary: Expectations have their own unsharable weight. Jadeite tries to ease Endymion's burden, if only for a moment. Written for the 2015 Knights of Elysian challenge.


**Sacrament**

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The air is thick tonight, and the crowd is even thicker. Jadeite tries to skirt the edges but even then, hands reach from the anonymous mass to draw him in. He smells crushed laurel and daphne, perfumed oil and sweaty linen, wine on a thousand hot breaths. Salt and ozone. They stand by the sea, but the sand is wet only with drink.

Their chatter and singing and shouting washes over him, far louder than the dull groan of the waves. The torches illuminate his way some, in the absence of the Moon hidden behind clouds. His feet are abraded by bird claws and driftwood; the crowd breaks where the great boulders begin. Jadeite thinks he catches a glimpse of red-gold hair and silver rings among the black shoulders of the stones, but he can't be sure. In their protective shadows, a few couples press each other urgently against the tide-beaten granite.

He feels his way along, putting his hands out against the slick boulders, shuffling his feet in the tide pools between. The Moon emerges from behind her veil just as he stumbles into the isolated, shallow inlet where Endymion waits, back turned.

He's alone.

Uncharacteristically, the general hesitates. He's seen Kunzite and none else take Endymion aside before such events, seen him offer quiet counsel and comfort. Their relationship is not entirely clear to him; he's of course heard the rumors that they were intimate in their not-so-distant youth. Whatever they were, they remain extraordinarily close. Perhaps it's him the Prince waits for. In any case, it's already too late. Endymion has turned at the sound of his footsteps.

"The sacrament is about to begin, Prince."

"I know."

In the comparative peace of the clearing, away from the massed crowd, Endymion's customarily quiet voice seems loud. "I needed a moment to myself."

Jadeite can imagine. Or at least, he can try. Having had his arms, chest, and other parts fondled by strangers at least seven times on the way here, he can guess at how the sheer number and noise of impressions might have overwhelmed the Prince. He's grateful that his own power is not such. Someday, it will prove an asset to Endymion. Not today, when so much rides on his ability to be as one with his people. Even now, as the Prince cranes his neck, catches a glimpse of thousands of torches, hears the noise carried to them on a breeze, his breathing speeds up and goes choppy.

"You have a few moments yet." Jadeite steps forward again, and then another step, blotting out Endymion's vision, and gestures at the structure behind him a few inches shorter than he is and draped in white cloth. "Enough to explain this sacrament to me, at least."

Endymion nods, visibly relaxing. "Of course. I forget that you've hardly spent any time here at the Court. Nephrite told me somewhat of your time together on the eastern campaign." To Jadeite's ear, he sounds a touch wistful. "I wish I could have come, too."

"Someday soon, Prince."

Privately, he doubts that. He's found Endymion wry and perceptive, well-trained to speak and fight both. Surprisingly charming, idealistic to a fault. His power – or rather, his incomplete control over it – makes him a touch guarded, perhaps. But in Jadeite's view, his only real fault is how coddled he is. Kunzite's love for him will keep him a child, he thinks, but the other man must know his charge best. And Jadeite can see it too, the greatness the Prince is capable of, if given time to develop it and men to defend it.

He could be the King to make Earth a power once again.

Endymion's smile is faint, as if he reads his thoughts without touch. "Probably not, though it's kind of you to say so. I can see why Kunzite praises your silver tongue."

The Eastern king laughs out loud. "Praises? Kunzite?"

The Prince grins, too, and then sobers. "Anyway, you were asking about the sacrament. You see this statue?" He catches Jadeite's hand stretching towards it. "No, don't. I'm not meant to see it before."

"What is it?"

"Do you know anything of the story of my house?"

He'd have to have spent his life under a rock not to know, but he's curious to hear how Endymion tells it himself. "A bit. Enlighten me."

"My ancestor was the first Endymion," the Prince explains, his voice taking on the cadence of a tutor's. Likely his own. "He was born a shepherd and became King at Elis. What we call Elysion now, of course. Then Selene came to him." A flush crawls up his neck. "When they – when she put him to sleep, as they say – " Jadeite immediately guesses that the uncensored version of the tale has only rather recently been told to him " – that's when the civil wars started. And the rest you know."

"Earth wasn't united under one king until – "

"Until now," Endymion finishes. "When my grandmother came to power, she began performing this sacrament on the first full moon of every year. She said it should be done while Selene is watching, so the goddess can see that we are not afraid."

"What is the sacrament, exactly?"

Endymion lays his hand on top of the shrouded statue. "This is meant to be Selene herself. They'll bring her out there, to the mouth of the sea, and unveil her to me. It's somewhat of a play. A reenactment of the goddess coming to Endymion for the first time. Kunzite recites a few lines in the old tongue, and then, instead of succumbing to her, I'm to submerge 'Selene' in the sea."

The Eastern king raises an eyebrow. "Sounds like Zoisite's kind of ceremony."

The Prince nods. "I think my grandmother spent her girlhood in the northern isles. Zoisite told me that until my father's time, they used to find the most beautiful girl in the city to play the goddess. They'd tie a huge stone to her feet, and…" he trails off, shuddering. "Over time they started carving her image into the stone. And now only the stone is drowned."

"How progressive."

Endymion chuckles bitterly. "Isn't it? If the Moon truly is watching, no wonder they laugh at us." He pushes his hair back from where it has fallen in his eyes. "Believe me, when I'm King at Elysion, this'll be the first thing I do away with."

This time, Jadeite doesn't hesitate. "That would be unwise," he says quietly.

There's a confused pause as surprise and displeasure war over the Prince's features.

"Why?" he finally bites out. "Shouldn't we show them we're past this kind of stupid, savage ritual?"

"When we're truly past it, perhaps. Until then, it is expected of you."

Endymion's eyes narrow. "I'm surprised to hear you say so. Nephrite told me you're not one for futile rituals."

Jadeite's lip quirks involuntarily at the memory, and the lesson that came with it. "Even the most 'futile rituals' bind us in ways we can't see. Your subjects need to see that you remember what happened to your ancestor. That you're stronger than him, and that the Moon cannot touch you."

"Do you think I am?" the younger man asks abruptly. His chin pushes forward. "Stronger, I mean? Is that why you gave your oath? You're a king in your own right."

"So are the others."

"I'm not asking you to speak for the others," he returns peremptorily.

Beyond the boulders, they both hear the wind picking up. The tide grows high.

"To be frank, Prince...I came to the Golden Court for reasons more practical than principled." He speaks with deliberation, buying time. "It wasn't so long ago that my army stood undecided at the border between the Far the Middle East. I'd heard Kunzite was undefeated in battle, and what's more, he was looking for a fourth to join the Shitennou. Opinions differed, of course, but...I'd been living in a war camp since I was a child. I wanted to see an end to years of training, of campaigning – "

The Prince's dark eyes search his face. "Of bloodshed?"

The general gives a small shrug. "Let us say that an alliance seemed the best way forward, all perspectives considered."

Endymion exhales in an impatient rush. "You are not telling me the whole truth."

Time to throw the dice, Jadeite muses to himself. "I think it is the only truth that matters, Prince."

Black eyebrows furrow. "So your decision had nothing to do with me, then."

He hears the relief there, as clearly as if Endymion had spoken it, and knows that his gamble has paid off.

"No," he says simply. "In my eyes, you're just a man."

And it's true, he's startled to realize. Close as they stand, they're eye to eye and Endymion's shoulders are almost as broad as his own. There's stubble growing on his jaw, too. A skinny, long-lashed boy when the general met him a year past, and now...

"But in their eyes, I must be more than a man," the Prince murmurs, finally. "I understand."

In the distance, a woman gives a husky whoop - a cue - and then the unmistakable first beat of the drums, so loud that Jadeite feels it rock his chest. The pulse of the tide. The crowd's great bellow follows, punctuated by by the sea birds' shrieks, and then the same woman who whooped before begins to sing, her voice low, her song undulating like the raised tail of a scorpion.

A touch paler than before, even under the moonlight, Endymion turns away from the general to face the cloth-draped statue before him.

Understanding the conversation to be ended, Jadeite silently backs out of the clearing, his gaze on the bowed head of the Prince.

Back among the crowd, the atmosphere has only grown more heated. Endymion's subjects might expect him to refuse Selene's temptation tonight, but Jadeite senses no one here plans to show any such restraint. He hadn't paid much attention to the garb of the men and women before, but now he sees many of their cheeks and hair are streaked with white paint, and their arms and legs are decked in silver chains; there is more than one would-be Moon sprite among the teeming masses.

Nephrite is nowhere to be seen, perhaps already indulging in the license the sacrament provides those who are not the Prince. He clearly spies Zoisite now, standing at the front of the crowd; dressed more richly than anyone else in silk weighted with pearls, translucent skin showing all its blue-green veins in the moonlight. He seems amused enough as a boy licks at the aloof edge of his mouth.

Jadeite's eyelids fall heavy. He lets the heady torch smoke fill his lungs, spread his muscles, loosen his bones. He accepts wine from a woman twice his age with laughter in her kohl-rimmed eyes; lingering, she kisses him once, twice, and then he takes her in his arms.

For now, he's content with anonymity at the Golden Court, to know no one and have no one know him. It's a state he's unused to in his own kingdom and suspects the Prince will never know anywhere on Earth. Even with his eyes shut, he can tell when Endymion takes his first step out of the clearing. The crowd-beast shudders in unison, groans low and cries out wordlessly to welcome their Prince. The singer's voice swoops high and exultant, soaring without effort over the great noise.

When he opens his eyes again, he sees the three of them standing in the water. Kunzite, who hardly needs pale adornments to appear a creature of the Moon, stands unswaying with his massive arms folded in his robes. Beryl just behind, cat-eyes unusually soft, foam lapping at her gowned legs. And deeper in, Endymion, gaze resolute on the clearing he's just left. He's clad in nothing more than a rough shawl, wrapped low and tight around his hips and draped over his left shoulder – the humble shepherd, Jadeite supposes.

It only takes one strong man to bring the statue down into the sea; it must have been cleverly hollowed out from the inside. The waves ease off the veil, and the general inhales sharply along with the crowd. It's impossible not to. Whoever shaped this stone is clearly gifted. The goddess is more than lovely; her face is deceptively gentle, eyes wide as though she's caught wakefully dreaming. The sigil of the Moon is emblazoned on her forehead. Selene.

Jadeite is far from the tallest man in the shifting crowd, so he misses the precise moment when Endymion submerges the statue and a great cheer rises from the masses, a cheer that reverberates off the boulders, drops and throbs like the sound of an animal. It hardly matters. Even Kunzite and Beryl cant unconsciously toward each other as they drift back to shore; the lure of the night is difficult to resist.

He swallows, feeling an open mouth pressing against his throat and collarbones, breasts pressing into his back. Lost to the faceless crowd, the Eastern king finally allows himself to caress the face of one woman in his arms, then the other; to let his fingers trail and raise gooseflesh on their naked arms and sides. The night takes hold. When he looks up, Endymion's knowing gaze is fixed on his, from across the expanse of sand and sea.

The Prince still stands alone in the waves, hands emptied of their burden, watching Jadeite – watching them all – with curious impassivity.

The woman behind Jadeite playfully pulls him down. Drunk, his back hits the sand; all he sees is the Moon above him, disorienting in its brilliance. A globe of cold and strange fire. More than a man, the thought lingers to trouble him, like torch smoke slow to dissipate. Can anyone be? Can he? Is it right to ask it of him?

He closes his eyes, and yet, as his sense is overcome by his senses, the Moon still burns behind his eyelids, bright as day.

_Are you watching?_

_Do you see?_

_We are not afraid._

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A/N: I would be remiss if I didn't note that Kenneth Rexroth's _Confusion of the Senses_ inspired some of the language here. Writing is definitely a muscle that I haven't exercised in way too long (this is unfortunately true for most of my muscles...). I was desperate to get this out at least within a few days of the 2/14 deadline for the Knights of Elysian challenge. My apologies for how rough it reads! I tried to get a sense of Jadeite's title as the knight of patience and harmony across, without being too explicit about it. I hope it worked.


End file.
